People are being killed in Syria, those people are protesting against the ruling government of President Bashar al-Assad. A Youtube video shown by Al-Jazeera today shows a man behind a camera shot by a sniper. There is also footage of firing into protestors, that number tens rather than hundreds, which appears to result in the death of one man.

The Syrian President can dismiss the demonstrations as small scale and unrepresentative and whilst he can call on the numbers that we saw last week on the streets of Damascus, he may even be right to claim so.

However, you can not use your police to kill your own citizens.

The days of dictators – however, benevolent, and by all accounts Assad has until recent events been seen as a refreshing change to the iron fist wielded by his father – are long gone, even in Syria, where it is often remarked that no one sleeps in the street.